Opinion

Interim findings from the Co-operation in Social Housing Commission Pilot Programme

by Eleanor Benton, LSE Housing and Communities, and
Rowan Mackay, Community Led Homes

The Co-operation in Social Housing Commission brings together stakeholders from across the social housing sector to explore how co-operation and collaboration between landlords and residents can work to address key issues the sector is currently facing. Under the Commission, LSE Housing and Communities team has been working with Community Led Homes team at CDS to capture learnings from 5 pilot projects since April 2025. While each pilot is different in scale, geography and the specific issues being addressed, all are exploring models of co-operation and shared decision-making that aim to share power between tenants and landlords within existing legal and regulatory frameworks.

The work of the Commission is set against a backdrop of increased costs, new Consumer Standards and lowering levels of resident satisfaction across the social housing sector. At the same time, risks to conventional models of tenant management are emerging as a result of landlord’s increased burden of responsibility under new housing regulation. Amidst calls for a different kind of landlord-tenant relationship, the pilot projects trial collaborative governance and shared decision-making as one solution to deteriorating landlord-tenant relationships and a possible alternative to conventional tenant management.

The pilot projects are led by three housing associations – CDS, Croydon Churches Housing Association and St Martin of Tours, and the Confederation of Co-operative Housing. They cover a range of projects from new build social rented homes to collaborative management and decision-making and collective retrofit. LSE Housing and Communities have been observing the pilots and interviewing participants since April 2025. Parallel peer-learning programmes run by the Community Led Homes team and funded by Trust for London, provide an opportunity for residents and housing officers to come together, share their experiences and problem solve this new type of relationship. Both the Pilot and Learning Programmes have faced challenges, particularly around participation from both officers and residents. The learnings below can therefore also be seen as indicators highlighting challenges to achieving transformational change within this sector.

Co-operation offers an alternative to devolution.

Even though none of the tenants involved in the pilots have a legal Right To Manage, the question of which issues should residents be involved in and which should remain the sole responsibility of the landlord remains a life one.  Different from devolved management in which full responsibility is passed to tenants (e.g. via Tenant Management Organisation or Co-operative) the collaborative approaches trialled by the pilots propose regular open dialogue, open sharing of information and effective feedback to ensure landlords’ decisions are genuinely made with their tenants.

A key theme emerging from the commission work is the idea of finding a middle ground between devolved responsibility and business as usual. The case for this is strengthened by a pattern of large landlords closing their TMOs dues to concerns over statutory responsibility in light of new regulation. At a recent round table on this topic, TMO representatives referred to well documented benefits of tenant management for improving satisfaction, efficiency and service delivery, and is an issue that the Commission will be looking to explore further.

There is a question around the level of responsibility tenants want to take. One tenant group who initially wanted full management responsibility later reconsidered once they understood the practical and regulatory implications, such as rent collection and managing statutory duties. However, they still wanted to be at the table when problems arose or when decisions affected their homes and communities. Questions were also raised about who should be finding solutions to long-term issues; with some residents feeling that landlords expected them to design fixes for problems that had already been raised many times, leaving them frustrated and unheard.

Housing is personal. Relationships are historical.

Housing is personal for everyone and unresolved issues like faulty lifts or waste management problems impact lives on a daily basis. This can make it difficult for tenants to engage in conversations about strategic or long-term change when recurring issues are not being addressed. The pilots have shown that officers often approach issues from this wider strategic perspective, which can then conflict with residents’ more personal perspectives. Residents need to be able to express frustration or criticise their landlord without staff becoming defensive, as this can hinder conversations and chances of finding a productive route forward. Events that happened years ago or with a different landlord will still impact the relationship if those experiences go unheard and issues remain unresolved. While it may be frustrating for a meeting planned to deal with a specific issue goes off track, time needs to be allowed to work though those every-day issues and past conflicts, and to re-build relationships allowing trust to build over time.

Flexibility and legitimacy are a balancing act.

Questions arose about what constitutes legitimate engagement, and a legitimate tenant voice. Not all residents have the time, interest, or capacity to be actively involved. Those who chose to participate acknowledged that they could not represent everyone, but even if numbers were low, it was important to make progress with people who do show up, giving everyone including landlord officers the opportunity to discuss and explore issues in depth. While flexible participation helps with accessibility, progress can be difficult without a stable core group. Even if a tenant group is formed, inconsistent attendance can impact the time it takes to build momentum. This can make it difficult for organisations to plan budgets or predict the resources required.

Established models of tenant management tell us that a legitimate tenant voice requires formal constitution and representation, but in reality, for a diversity of voices to be heard requires flexibility, a diversity of methods and allowing people to drop in and out. What is important is that every resident has the opportunity to be involved if they feel they want to, and so the question becomes how can the sector adapt its understanding of legitimacy to fit this reality without compromising on diversity?

Knowledge-sharing is power-sharing.

Each pilot has found ways to share information about different aspects of housing management that wouldn’t normally be available to tenants. Rather than wanting full control over management, in most cases we found that tenants want to better understand the decisions that were being made, and to inform them where helpful. We found that landlords were often not in full control of decisions, with many being influenced by external bodies or regulations. For example, health and safety measures may be mandated by local authorities, and decisions over parking may be entirely outside the landlord’s control.  Financial constraints also play a major role in shaping what is possible, with constrained budgets determining which priorities could be delivered. Clear explanations and transparency around decision-making processes are essential. One pilot offered sessions to improve tenants’ understanding of major works programmes and budgeting and then prioritising works together with budget holders.

Co-operation is a skill.

It is clear from the pilots that co-operation between tenants and landlords is helped enormously by having someone in a neutral position to hold the discussion and help mediate when differences arise. This role is often taken by an external facilitator but could also be someone from the landlord or a tenant. What is important is that everyone involved in a discussion can represent themselves without also having to hold the discussion space. Facilitating or chairing in this way is a skill and without training or investment, staff capacity could be a limiting factor to successful co-operation. We found that while external facilitators can devote their time to (re)building relationships, front-line staff are often already overstretched without adding a new dimension to their work. Officers can be reluctant to build co-operative relationships with residents in case it goes wrong or highlights power dynamics that are beyond their control. Co-operative workshops often happen outside of work hours, and the additional burden on staff also needs to be recognised.

Communities are complex.

A key motivation for tenants involved in the pilots is community building and encouraging neighbourliness among their neighbours. Communities, however, are not a unified group, and opinions, cultures and values can vary. Community building, then, can be as much exclusive as it can inclusive. Among the pilots, the more formalised tenant groups benefited from pre-existing trusting relationships that equipped them to deal with issues as they arose, but who also had concerns about new people joining. Other, more informal groups had less influence over group membership and were keen for new members to join but when it came to allocations for new homes, wanted to see these addressing existing needs on the estate. These issues and tensions however are not clear cut and highlight the inherent messiness of that needs to be embraced as part of a co-operative approach.

This also raises questions about how to build co-operative structures that nurture community whilst remaining fair over time.  If there is value in local autonomy, how to also ensure this is grounded in fairness and democratic principles? The deliberative forums and approaches taken by pilots propose to offer a way for the nuance of such tensions to be understood and so allowing for fair solutions to be found – and time will tell if this is seen to be the case. Beyond the collaboration itself, practical interventions such as ensuring access to a suitable community space and both residents and staff being able to run events independently were also important in helping bring people together, to build relationships and share concerns more openly.

Effective co-operation needs structural support.

While the pilots demonstrate a different kind of landlord-tenant relationship, some residents felt that the process could never feel entirely equal, as the landlord ultimately holds financial power and control.  The landlord will always have authority to start, pause or cancel initiatives, and while proposals put forward by co-operative committees or panels may have the support of front-line staff, these may easily go unheard without proper accountability. Embedding co-operative practices within organisational governance and accountability structures goes some way to ensuring such initiatives deliver for both landlords and tenants and can be sustained over time. Without a formal agreement to co-operate or contractual exchange, the greater risk will always be to the tenant. This, then, presents an interesting problem for further work.

 

Full findings and recommendations to the sector will be published by the Commission later this year.

 

latest stories and opinion

Our director, Levent Kerimol joined Hanna Afolabi from Mood & Space and Selasi Setufe MBE to talk about community led housing for the Property Development Book Club podcast.

The conversation covered what community led housing is, what makes it unique, how it addresses affordability, misconceptions, barriers, and how it could scale without loosing the diverse resident control that makes community led housing so powerful.
The discussion touches on Collective Ownership as a way to achieve this, as well as our work to Build Belonging, convening a community group around a professional development scheme.

 

latest stories and opinion

Our director, Levent Kerimol spoke to the London Assembly Housing Committee about community led housing, alongside:
• Tom Copley, Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development,
• Dr Tom Moore from the University of Liverpool, and
• Paul Nicoll from Triodos Bank.

We drew on our reflections for the future looking at the barriers to community led housing, and how we might think differently to give people control and belonging without the challenges encountered to date.

 
The earlier session also covered useful ground and featured:
• Tom Chance, Community Land Trust Network
• Niall Mulholland, London Federation of Housing Co-operatives
• Fatimatu Mohamed, Gida Housing Co-operative
• Bernadette Marjoram, Board Member, Meridian Home Start

 
The Assembly Committee has also issued a call for evidence from anyone who would like to contribute written submissions. Please see the details on their website and get responses in by Thursday 22 August 2024.

 

latest stories and opinion

by Levent Kerimol.

We’ve been doing quite a bit of reflecting recently, as it is around 5 years since CLH London got going. We have always sought to see community led housing become a consistent part of a diverse London housing offer.

Community led housing is all about the empowerment of residents. This contrasts with a more paternalistic relationship between housing providers and residents seen in public housing and private rented housing, as well as in the development of all housing, with generic and impersonal decisions beyond the control of residents and prospective residents. Where residents control what matters to them most about their housing, they have an inherent interest in the qualities of their homes, common spaces, and neighbourhoods. The physical environment and collective decision making can engender more sociable and neighbourly relationships, and lead to a wide range of benefits.

The scale, breadth, and pace of what we have tried to achieve has been ambitious, and has required intensive work, building sector capacity from very little. We have supported a large and diverse range of projects, with a focus on the ‘group’ and ‘site’ stage. Many projects have made considerable progress with support and mentoring from our team.

There are now several projects with credible sites making progress through planning, and it’s great to see earlier projects reaching the end of construction. We have also successfully supported several London boroughs to develop their approach and policies, and providing a number of site opportunities for community led housing. We have proven to be an agile and effective resource.

Despite these valuable successes, we estimate community led housing (CLH) is still around 0.1% of total stock and 0.1% of annual output in London. We’ve seen first-hand, the many intertwined commercial and systemic barriers CLH faces. We’ve sought to find ways around barriers where we can, and attempted to crack vicious circles at different points on each project, one by one. But this is hard work, and we couldn’t help thinking there must be a better way!

Through this thinking we’ve become aware of two related preconceptions; that CLH always starts with a group, and that CLH is about delivering new housing.

The ‘group’ preconception

The diversity of London has naturally generated groups with different motivations and aspirations. From demographic to geographic communities, niche and broad – from independent churches to moorings to established housing co-ops – all with different approaches to tenure, development, partnerships, site identification and acquisition, some seeking to innovate from first principles. While we value the diversity of projects we’ve been involved in, each of these has required largely bespoke support, often starting from scratch.

As humans, we seem predisposed to the story of spontaneously formed community groups, valiantly triumphing over adversity, but success is when community led housing is no longer newsworthy because it is so commonplace. We have also inadvertently defaulted into responding to individual requests from individual groups, trying to fashion projects that meet their specific requirements, whilst faced with similar commercial and systemic challenges every time.

What if we started with clear repeatable project types and enabled interested people to form groups around those projects?

The ‘development’ preconception

Based on our experience with groups, and the enquiries we receive, we see that many people like the idea of living in community led housing but are put off by the idea of taking on a lengthy and risky development project.

Yet somehow we as a sector have readily accepted the mantra from governments of all hues that we need to be building more homes. Community led housing has been presented as a “new source of housing supply”. Government funding has only been for “additional supply”. However expecting each start-up community led group to take on a development project, or be involved in one, is a big ask, and one which invites a range of challenges. Even the partnerships we’ve helped to create have been tenuous one-offs due to systemic issues in the London market.

What if we left the practicalities of delivering new homes to those with the skills and resources to do so, and let community led housing focus on what it is good at and where it adds value?

 

We believe what is central to, and distinctive about, community-led housing is resident control and belonging – that people can shape what matters most to them in their housing within a supportive community.

What matters most to most people is not the detail of the development process, but the lived experience, which is as much to do with neighbours, management, maintenance, and security of tenure, as well as the physical form. We’ve seen community expressed even where housing is fairly generic and not purpose-built for CLH.

There is naturally a large desire for affordability, but it is often harder to make housing affordable through small start-up organisations undertaking development. Whereas CLH is very good at locking in any affordability in perpetuity.

Letting go of preconceptions, we are currently working on developing focused pro-active interventions, that give people control and belonging, without the challenges encountered to date:

• Collective Ownership offers control and security for private renters with increasing affordability over time, and mechanisms to ensure others benefit in future, by purchasing properties.
• Build Belonging custom built cohousing where we help developers incorporate the social and design principles of CLH into their developments, and forge communities around these projects.
• Coproduction and Stewardship where power sharing relationships for resident management or community stewardship on larger-scale schemes, add social value and save money in the long term.

We have started to develop these ideas, alongside our traditional work supporting groups and councils creating opportunities. We hope we can broaden what people think of when they think of community led housing, as a realistic and achievable option for all.

 

latest stories and opinion